‘Educational charts, myths and social control’ by Chitra Ganesh in Protodispatch
Chitra Ganesh, Lantern Head, archival digital print, 2013.
Artist Chitra Ganesh maps how the visual language of childhood is produced by powerful ideologies, unpacking a nearly ubiquitous Indian food chart as evidence of the Indian government’s attempts to systematically erase a multivalent, secular, and diverse India
I’ve always been compelled by what I have come to articulate as “the visual languages of childhood.” My attraction began as a lonely only child in the late 1970s—early ’80s, who found endless hours of pleasure in the company of narratives that integrated text and image—including Grimms’ Fairy tales, the Tell Me Why books , and the Amar Chitra Katha comics. As a young adult studying semiotics, I was obsessed with identifying sign systems and how they functioned in everyday visual language, and with uncovering their dirty work that was couched in childhood. I began to see how and where the semiotic structure of children’s education, integrating images and text, was potently developed in comics, fairy tales, and elementary school charts. In this light, visual languages of childhood play a critical pedagogical role—as containers and signifiers for propagating key social hierarchies and paradigms, by transforming the subjective juxtaposition of discreet images and text into general knowledge, common sense, and moral or social codes.